The Relationship between Theory of Mind and Pragmatic Language Skills in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Typical Development

Abstract

Introduction: An outstanding research question is whether the interaction between theory of mind (ToM) and pragmatic language skills differs in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typical development. This study investigated the relationship between ToM and pragmatics in individuals with ASD and children with typical development (CTD) and between these skills and Test of Language Development (TOLD-TR) scores which were determined as a participant criterion. Method: Sixteen individuals with ASD with TOLD-TR test equivalent age 7;0-8;11 and 46 CTD aged 6;0-8;11 were included. Child Form of Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), Strange Stories Test, and Pragmatic Language Skills Inventory (PLSI) were used. Findings: PLSI and RMET scores as well as PLSI and Strange Stories scores did not significantly correlate in the ASD group. Nevertheless, in CTD, there were many weak-to-moderate level significant relationships between Strange Stories and PLSI subtest scores. In both groups, there were significant relationships between all TOLD-TR subtest scores and Strange Stories scores, except for TOLD-TR Syntactic Understanding in the ASD group. Numerous weak-to-strong correlations between TOLD-TR and PLSI scores as well as between TOLD-TR and ToM scores were found in the CTD group. In the ASD group, however, moderate-to-strong relationships between Strange Stories and the TODIL composite, between Sentence Comprehension and Morpheme Completion, and between RMET and Morpheme Completion. Discussion: It emerged that groups could have different patterns of interaction between these variables. The lack of correlation between ToM and pragmatics in ASD may be explained by the relatively small sample size and the fact that the norm group of the PLSI was largely composed of CTD. Additionally, the importance of sentence and syntax comprehension in ToM was revealed.